


Together Time

by sun_summoning



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Chat Noir Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Lady Noir, F/M, Ladybug Adrien Agreste | Mister Bug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 06:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sun_summoning/pseuds/sun_summoning
Summary: When Hawkmoth finds himself a partner, Mister Bug resents Lady Noire even more. She’s been running around on rooftops for as long as he has, but unlike him, she’s never actually done anything to try stopping their shared enemy. Hawkmoth sends his akuma after her just as much as he sends them after Mister Bug, so he just can’t comprehend why she refuses to work with him.





	Together Time

**Author's Note:**

> An "Enemies" AU.

When Hawkmoth finds himself a partner, Mister Bug resents Lady Noire even more. She’s been running around on rooftops for as long as he has, but unlike him, she’s never actually done anything to try stopping their shared enemy. Hawkmoth sends his akuma after her just as much as he sends them after Mister Bug, so he just can’t comprehend why she refuses to work with him. 

Then again, Lady Noire told him _exactly_ why she refuses to work with him.

She doesn’t care.

He tried to press her for more, but she just shrugged and asked why she _should_ care. After that, his points about doing what’s _right_ only made her laugh as she sauntered away from him. That was years ago.

He needs her now more than ever though. Hawkmoth has Mayura now, and he’s striking harder and in quicker succession. Mister Bug knows he can rely on some people he’d chosen with Master Fu’s blessing, but none of them seem to have the ease she does with her miraculous. Nino and Alya and Chloe all work well enough and maybe with more time, they can be better. Unfortunately, none of them have Lady Noire’s agility or quick thinking. She’s amazing in a fight, carefree and unpredictable, and it’s a shame she’s not on his side.

Mister Bug doesn’t really consider her his enemy per se. 

Hawkmoth is his enemy. 

Mayura is his enemy. 

Lady Noire is just a hindrance. 

He wants to call her a coward, but Lady Noire’s taken down more than a handful of akuma on her own and reluctantly by his side, albeit because they kept pestering her for her miraculous. He thinks that she’s heartless for her neutrality, her reluctance to answer fate’s call, but how can he really blame another teenager for that. She doesn’t do anything to get in his way. Rather, she stays in her lane, only detouring occasionally for petty thefts, breaking and entering, and some light vandalism. 

Lady Noire is _annoying_.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight.” 

Mister Bug almost jumps when he notices the girl sitting next to him. He has no idea when she got there or how she got so close without him even noticing. That just makes him resent her even more for not wanting to help him with Hawkmoth. 

“Cat got your tongue, Bugaboy?” she presses. She leans in with a smarmy little grin because she discovered how flustered flirting made him years ago and hasn’t stopped since. She’s never tried to touch him, of course. She resorts only to fluttering her eyelashes coyly and dropping a few teasing lines. It’s positively infuriating that that’s _still_ actually effective. 

“Don’t call me Bugaboy,” he snaps.

“Oh dear. Bugaboy’s in a bad mood.”

“Of course Bugaboy’s in a bad mood.” Mister Bug glares at her. His chest heaves as he feels all the pressure of his role, of Master Fu’s role, of the role Lady Noire can so easily turn her back on. “Hawkmoth has a literal partner in crime now and yet somehow I’m still doing all of this solo!”

Lady Noire doesn’t recoil. Instead, her catlike gaze narrows. “Don’t you have a turtle or whatever?”

He grinds his teeth as he tries to curb his frustration.

“No.” Lady Noire taps her chin. “I suppose they’ve broken some rules, haven’t they? Your little Team Miraculous. Your turtle and fox figured each other out and that bit them both in the butt.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was watching.”

“_What_?!”

“What?”

“And you didn’t _help_?!”

She shrugs. “You didn’t ask.”

“I’ve been asking for years!”

She just waves a hand and considers that matter closed. “And then you have your bee. What’s her name again? Queen Brat?”

Mister Bug frowns. “You know it’s Queen Bee.”

“Right, right…” Lady Noire acts like she’s thinking hard but Mister Noire knows she’s these are things she figured out a long time ago. “So you want to withdraw Nino Lahiffe, Alya Cesaire, and Chloe Bourgeois from the game then?”

“You know their _names_?!”

“I’m a curious cat, Bugaboy.” Her lips twitch, but she doesn’t smirk. “Clever, too.”

“Do you know who Hawkmoth and Mayura are too?” he asks heatedly. He huffs. “Or better yet, my own identity?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Of course you haven’t.” He stands because while Lady Noire’s cavalier attitude is amusing on some nights, right now he just can’t take it. He doesn’t look at her as he throws his yoyo towards the next building over. “After all, you don’t _care_.”

.

.

.

Adrien doesn’t really know Marinette Dupain-Cheng. They’ve been classmates since college, but they’re well into lycée and he can probably count the number of conversations they’ve had together on one hand. 

He really doesn’t think she holds the gum incident against him. Still, he’s Chloe’s friend, and he’s pretty she holds _that_ against him. Chloe still does her best to torment Marinette, but nowadays Marinette just ignores her. And Marinette is never mean to him. She’s never mean to anyone. For the most part, she just keeps to herself. She’s nice enough if you talk to her, he recalls, but he probably hasn’t tried talking to her since their college graduation.

“Hello,” he greets.

She looks at him warily and he really can’t blame her. Generally he’s the kind of student that likes sitting at the front of class, the one you can count on to be diligently taking notes. Sitting at the back of the room with Marinette and her notebook full of things other than notes is out of character for him. 

“Can I sit here?”

“Why?” 

Adrien blinks. “Uh—”

“Sorry. Yes, of course.” Marinette moves her bag off of the seat beside her, and Adrien swears he hears it yelp. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

Given Mayura’s introduction, Adrien has a feeling he’s going to be sneaking out of class more often. Sitting by the door is important. And sitting with a girl who couldn’t care less about his presence is a plus too.

There are still a few minutes until their first day of class starts. Marinette easily ignores him, but Adrien feels compelled to make conversation. This is their last year of school together and they’re hardly the thirteen-year-olds they once were. Maybe they could be friends. 

Adrien goes over what he knows about Marinette and recalls the contest she won that was hosted by Gabriel. 

“Are you still into fashion, Marinette?”

“What?” She slaps her hand over the open page of her notebook. “Um. Yes.”

Naturally, his gaze moves towards whatever she was trying to cover. She doesn’t do a good job. By her thumb he sees a cat that’s fairly out of proportion with a head much bigger than its body. The cat reminds him of Tikki actually. In Marinette’s sketch, the cat is wearing a little collared shirt and a bow tie.

Marinette catches his stare and shrugs. “Sometimes I dabble in other kinds of clothing.”

“Like pet clothing?”

“Yes?”

He smiles. “It’s really cute.”

Marinette smiles back. “He is.”

“What?”

“Oh.” Marinette looks down at her sketch and moves her hand away. The same cat is drawn all over the page in a variety of outfits. Beside each image are her notes about fabrics and measurements. “My cat.”

“You have a cat?”

She nods. “Do you like cats?”

He’s never had a cat, nor a dog, nor any other sort of pet at that. The closest thing he has to a cat would probably be that good for nothing not-partner of his. His expression darkens when he thinks about his interaction with her last night.

Marinette quirks an eyebrow. “I guess that’s a no.”

“What?” Adrien shakes his head. He tries to smile to get rid of his scowl, but Lady Noire is just so _infuriating_ that he only ends up mid-wince. “I do. I just…well, I have this cat. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“She comes and goes as she pleases.”

“How typical,” Marinette says with a small laugh. 

It’s a pretty laugh, but Adrien decides not to be distracted by that. “She has potential,” he explains. “I _know_ it. We would be great together. But she just refuses to be my pa—pet. My pet.”

Marinette hums. “Sounds like you really care about her.”

He does.

It’s hard not to. He’s drawn to her. Tikki says it has nothing to do with the miraculous, but he’s not sure. Otherwise that would mean it’s just her and he’s a glutton for the indifference and sass she shows him. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s just like him, a teenager being forced to play a game with a terrorist whose collateral is Paris’ collective mental health. She might not care about their call the way he does, but she’s still the only person who could possibly understand what it means to be, well, him. 

And Lady Noire is as big of a target as he is, the only difference being she’s not above dropping her transformation and just letting an akuma wreak havoc to screw Hawkmoth over. But what happens the day she isn’t able to protect herself? If she would just work with him, Adrien knows they could end this once and for all. 

He must looks as upset as he feels because Marinette puts a hand on his shoulder. He startles, glancing at her with wide eyes, and she begins to pull away. Then he beams at her, pleased with her contact, with her comfort, and Marinette relaxes. 

They could be great friends, Adrien is certain. Marinette is witty, he knows from conversations he’s overheard her having with other people. She’s smart and she’s amazing at video games and she probably has other amazing things about her that Adrien would know by now if they ever had the chance to be friends. 

Eventually Marinette pulls away and Adrien tries not to reach for the contact. 

She reaches into her purse. She pulls out a set of keys and proceeds to take something off of it. 

“Try this,” Marinette tells him as she drops a laser pointer onto his notebook. She winks as she shrugs. “It’s simple, but it’s certainly effective.”

.

.

.

That night, Mister Bug seeks out Lady Noire.

When he fails to find her, just like any other pet that’s gone silent, he _knows_ she’s up to no good. He checks the usual jewelry stores she likes to visit, the fashion houses, and eventually he notices her dropping into a fabric store he knows his father’s company orders from on occasion. She has the decency to pick the lock rather than slash it away. He watches her in the shadows and wonders when the hell she learned how to pick locks at all. 

Mister Bug makes his way inside as well. He catches up to her soon enough only to find her considering different rolls of lace. She mumbles to herself over the strengths and value of each one.

Deciding to test Marinette’s advice, Mister Bug points at one of the rolls and turns the laser on. 

Just like that, Lady Noire stiffens. Her back is to him, so he moves the red dot onto the table at her side. She soon drops both rolls of lace and pounces.

He laughs, immediately drawing her out of her daze.

Still sprawled out over the table she’d jumped on, she rolls onto her side and glares at him.

“You—”

He flashes the laser threateningly. 

“You know, you and I have only seriously fought each other four times—”

“I really wonder what you consider a serious fight because my count is in the twenties.”

“—but I am not above kicking your ass over this.”

Lady Noire gracefully slides off of the table. She picks up what she dropped and pulls out a metre of the first roll of lace. She cuts what she needs with her claws before putting everything away. She barely took anything and Mister Bug knows that no one would ever suspect her theft.

“What are you looking for?”

She scowls at him over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Oh, is my lady in a mood?”

That earns him an audible scoff. “I am not _your_ lady.” She whips around and he nearly crashes into her. “Nor am I your partner. I imagine that’s why you’re here, right? Because of those…what are they called? Sentimonsters? Should I just save you some time and say ‘no’ now?”

When he moves to use the laser again, she tries to rip it out of his hand. Of course, Mister Bug is taller than her, and simply holding it above his head is enough of a barrier. 

“You little—”

“Before you finish that, please remember that you are clearly the smaller one between the two of us.”

“Ugh!”

Mister Bug can’t help the grin that blooms on his face. Is this why she enjoyed flirting with him? Infuriating her is hilarious. 

“Give me the laser!”

“Oh, does my lady want the laser?”

He turns the light on and off a few times until her pupils blow wide and she calms down a fraction. Finally, he puts it in his pocket, and that seems to end the spell. Lady Noire glares at him, but he shrugs.

“I think I found a way to draw you into battles now.” Mister Bug winks at her. “I’ll just point the laser at the akuma and then you can go running in with your Cataclysm!” 

“I will Cataclysm your face!”

Mister Bug decides to leave her to her burgling. He’s already upset her enough. She’s kind of earned it. He knows he should stop her, but he doesn’t think she’s going to take _too_ much. 

He heads home and for once, the ladybug spots feel lighter on his shoulders. He drops his transformation in his bedroom and heads to his computer. Inspired by Marinette’s laser pointer, he looks for other ways to distract a cat and gain its affection. He reads the list over and over again until he has it memorized.

Tomorrow, he would find Lady Noire something shiny. 


End file.
